by Rob Preece
Kalfr also didn't know the guard schedules or rotations, and didn't even know the password for the following evening. Lubica had spent too long at war for its warlords to be careless.
There was no way Kalfr could help Ellie smuggle a hundred ninja into the citadel. And even if he could, there was no way even a hundred ninja could overcome the fortress's garrison of over five hundred soldiers and another hundred squires who could be armed and pressed into battle. Plus the off-duty city guards who often bunked in the fortress.
"Can you get access to the roof?” Ellie asked after running through just about everything else on her list.
"Oh, sure. Lots of people go up there to get some air or to grow herbs. But I don't see how that would help. It's three hundred feet high."
"Could you lower a line?"
Kalfr considered, then shook his head. “There are guards. They'd notice if I brought up a rope."
"Okay. I'll get the rope to you. Your job is to be there, secure the grappling hook, and then make sure any guards are distracted when we start coming over the top."
"If you can get a rope up three hundred feet of solid rock, I guess I can create a distraction."
"Good. Tomorrow night an hour before dawn, then."
"You are going to keep Arnold safe, aren't you?"
Ellie laughed. “Safer than the rest of us, anyway."
* * * *
The keep reeked of ancient magic. For hundreds of years, mages had summoned their energies to defend the fortress against physical and magical attack. After a time, it seemed, the shadows of those patterns remained, clinging to the building like lichen clinging to a rock.
For thirty hours, Ellie had carefully, slowly, dissolved many of the ancient barriers until, finally, she was ready to move. Just in time. Sunrise was probably two hours off. Mark would be launching his offensive to coincide with the break of dawn and she wanted to be in control of the fortress by then.
Ellie took the grappling hook and placed it in the center of her magical wards.
She pushed stones into place, creating the pattern that would focus her energy and watched the hook rise.
The guerilla army had gathered all the silk they'd looted from a dozen Rissel trading caverns and woven it into a lightweight rope, but three hundred feet of rope, even silk rope, was a heavy load for Ellie's magic.
Still, this was their only hope.
She pressed a stone into place, then another, trying to keep her focus on the purple haze of magic rather than on the thin rope that gradually paid out behind the levitated grappling hook.
Both hook and line were dyed a deep black. They blended into the darkness of night. Around her, she could sense rather than see the black uniforms of the proto-ninja as they gathered, stretched, and prepared for the long climb.
Her hands shook as she placed a stone. Each time, there was more weight to bear and each time, she was more fatigued. But fatigue didn't matter; only the task mattered. She shook sweat from her eyes but didn't dare take the moment to wipe them. It took time to focus enough energy to raise the hook. It would take only a momentary lapse of concentration to send it crashing to the ground.
She was pressing another stone into place when the sensation of weight vanished—and she stumbled forward, her head almost cracking into the flat rock where she had laid her pattern before she caught herself.
"It's up,” Alys breathed.
Ellie had wanted to go first. Now, she was glad she'd let Micael talk her out of it. She had about as much energy as a colicky kitten.
Instead, Micael began the long climb. Behind him, he trailed half a dozen thin black lines—lines he would use to haul up more ropes—if he survived long enough to do so.
In the meantime—Ellie forced herself to her feet. She had work to do down here.
The huge log had once been the central stay for an abandoned building's roof. During the past two days, the ninja had dug it out from the ruins. Now, they raised it on its end, and waited.
It seemed to Ellie that they'd waited forever. Surely Micael would have reached the top long before. Surely they must have been betrayed—either by Kalfr or by one of Arnold's other servants.
But a light finally flickered green and mysterious looking at the top of the keep.
She couldn't hear any sounds of fighting—but that didn't mean anything. The keep's rooftop was too far for any but the loudest of sounds to penetrate.
She felt, rather than saw, the ninja swarm up the silk rope and then the other lines that Micael had hauled behind him.
And she began her count.
If she moved too soon, she would warn the fortress and trap Micael and the other ninja on the rooftop. If she waited too long, the guards could swarm from the trap she was about to spring.
Another wave of ninja left. And she heard the first faint sound of metal on metal from far overhead.
Her muscles tensed, but she willed herself to relax. The first wave included their best warriors, ninja trained to move silently, to kill without allowing an alarm.
"Five hundred.” She finished the count out loud. “Now."
She put her shoulder behind the log—shoving it forward, off balance.
Ropes strung from a nearby church—not the church of Saint Armando—helped guide the log straight into the back of the raised drawbridge.
Ellie crossed her fingers as it fell. It was an old log. Although they'd searched it closely for termites or other damage, anything was possible. And if it disintegrated, they were in trouble.
Her plan was too ambitious, depended on too many things. She knew something would go wrong. She only hoped this wouldn't be it.
The log smashed into the bridge, shoving it more tightly against the portcullis. And held.
"Brace it,” she barked. “If it slips, we're finished."
Six hundred armed troops, undefeated and with a secure sallying point, could spell the difference between victory and defeat. The log, wedged against the drawbridge, just might keep them safely enclosed in the fortress, preventing any efforts in support of the troops assigned to the city walls. It wouldn't hold forever, but it didn't have to.
The keep, designed to be a fortress protecting the city, had just turned into a cage holding most of the city's defenders.
She didn't wait to see if the ninja were following her orders. Instead, she dashed up the sharply angled log and tossed bombs through each of the arrow slits that protected the gate.
Black smoke rolled out and the stench, a magically enhanced combination of skunk and burning pitch, drove her back. The bombs wouldn't stop the soldiers from taking their positions eventually, but those soldiers wouldn't be as effective as normal. The smoke and stench would add to the confusion of darkest night and make sniping difficult. If she'd calculated correctly, her dark-clad ninja would have time to secure their log, making sure that the drawbridge remained locked upright, and that the keep's garrison, along with the daytime shift from the city walls, remained locked within.
* * * *
In high school, Ellie had been best in her class at the rope climb. She'd gotten a kick out of beating huge football players who couldn't believe a slender female could outmuscle them. But a twenty-foot climb in P.E. class is different from a three hundred foot haul up the side of a fortress loud with alarm and filled with soldiers aching for a chance to earn their pay.
She didn't dare use her legs to walk up the building. Even her black ninja uniform wouldn't have been enough to protect her from the awakening guards if she hung herself out so visibly. Instead, she stuck close to the wall, pulling herself up hand over hand.
She was certain she should be nearing the top when she finally let herself look up—and saw that she had gone less than a third of the way.
A sudden scream split the night and a dark shape fell past her. Far below, an ugly splash sounded and the scream cut off abruptly.
She shook her head and pressed on. In the darkness, she hadn't recognized his face, but he had been one of her ninja. One
of their ropes had strayed too near one of the arrow slits and a guard had spotted it—and cut it.
Every instinct in her body urged her to forget about caution, to swarm up the rope and to safety as quickly as she could.
She forced herself to breathe, then continued her climb. If she arrived exhausted, or let herself run out of steam on the way up, she would be worse than useless. She would be dead.
From inside the fortress, alarm bells began to sound. Other alarms from outside, around the city, told Ellie that Mark's troops would face resistance now—assuming he'd even gotten enough soldiers inside the city to mount an effective attack.
But that was Mark's problem and Mark's job. She'd worry about him later. Right now, she was needed in the fortress.
Her life became the painful crawl up the fortress side.
The keep's stone walls tore at her clothing, ripped at her flesh.
Once, she saw movement behind a nearby arrow slit and tossed in another of her bombs.
But mostly, she climbed.
She did her best to turn off her brain, to put all of her energy into putting one hand on top of another.
She was in the zone when she felt a hand on her shoulders and was hauled onto the fortress roof.
"We've cleared the roof, but they still control three of the towers,” Alys whispered. “It isn't good."
It wasn't good. In fact, it was terrible. The towers were designed to provide enfilade firing zones down to the city, but they were connected to the interior of the fortress by their own passageways. The guards could use the tower to bring up reinforcements and then recapture the rooftop. She needed control of all eight.
"What's the condition on the rooftop?"
"We've captured five of the towers, obviously. We're lobbing bombs down the access ways and have kept anyone from coming up. We've destroyed three of the central access routes and are working on the fourth. And we've got complete control of the rooftop itself. A few guards are taking pot-shots from arrow slits in the inner atrium, but we've been able to control that by bombs and counterfire."
"Casualties?"
"We've still got fifty effectives."
More bad news. Not counting the ten ninja she'd left to guard the front door, that meant they'd suffered close to forty percent casualties.
"We have captured almost a hundred cannon, though,” Alys added. “If we win this fight, we'll have an artillery for the first time."
But winning seemed doubtful. Their plan had depended on their initial surge capturing the rooftop and the eight towers that threatened the city. The only good news was, the towers didn't have a good range of fire onto the rooftop itself. Eventually, though, the guards in the three uncaptured towers would figure out how to bring around their heavy cannon and start blasting at the exposed ninja on the rooftops.
She could retreat her soldiers into the towers they'd captured but that would simply delay their defeat. If Mark's soldiers were to have a chance, they needed to be protected from the cannon inside the guard towers. She needed to neutralize the entire fortress—especially the remaining three towers. And she needed to do it quickly.
"Keep throwing bombs into them,” she said. “See if you can wheel around some of the cannon to aim at the towers. I'll take a look around."
Her look around was disappointing. The stench and smoke from their bombs hung over the rooftop but, even in the darkness, she could see that the guards were already working on their cannon. And the guards knew more about artillery than her ninja did.
She didn't tell Alys to give up but it was a fairly hopeless race. The light cannon that could be maneuvered relatively quickly wouldn't do much damage to the solid masonry of the towers—but the same cannon could devastate exposed ninja on the rooftop.
The heavy cannon would take hours to move. And they didn't have hours.
"Do we have enough gunpowder to fire these things?” she asked.
"We've got plenty,” one of the ninja sergeants told her. “They have dozens of barrels of powder up here. Must have figured they were out of range of any attack."
"Okay. Roll a couple of barrels toward each of the towers. We'll try to blow them off the fortress."
"It's an idea."
Another ninja went down with a musketball through his throat as three rolled one of the barrels against the tower wall.
She yanked one of the torches off a holder. “Get down,” she commanded. Then she threw the torch at the barrel.
The flame nearly went out when it flew through the air, but not quite. The flame lapped at the barrel, charred the wood.
A hand reached out from the arrow slit they'd parked the barrel of gunpowder next to and tried to push away the torch.
Too late.
The barrel exploded.
An entire barrel of gunpowder, even a relatively small barrel, makes a monumental eruption.
Ellie pounded at her ears, but she couldn't hear anything over the solid static roar that went on and on.
One of the ninja had ignored Ellie's shouted message. Her body had taken a tiny fraction of the force of the explosion and had been thrown across the atrium in the middle of the fortress and broken against the opposite wall.
Unfortunately, the tower was charred but it still stood. The guard's hand, apparently undamaged except that it had been completely removed from the body it had been attached to, rested on the tower's crenellated top.
If she'd stopped and thought, she would have known the gunpowder would be ineffective. Explosives seek the path of least resistance. And it's easier to blow away a soft ninja than it is to knock a stone tower off its fortress. But it didn't make things any easier. She needed some way to focus the charge. Unfortunately, she didn't think the towers’ guards were likely to let her dig holes under them and set the gunpowder properly.
As she watched, another guard poked a musket out an arrow slit and fired.
The red flame at the tip of the musket proved he was shooting, but she still didn't hear anything.
The explosion had probably done more damage to the ninja than it had to the guards huddled within the protective walls of the tower.
Her gunpowder plot had backfired miserably.
* * * *
She signaled the remaining ninja to try it again, this time setting the gunpowder barrels against the wooden doorways.
The ninja sergeant looked dubious. “If you say so, princess."
"I do say so.” At least she signed it.
He wasn't enthusiastic. They'd lost two ninja in the last attempt and hadn't gained anything from it. But they couldn't just sit there and wait. Even if they were throwing their lives away to buy time for Mark, it was a sacrifice they had to make. Because, once Mark controlled the city, they'd at least have a standoff. If they lost now, before Mark could win, they would have nothing but defeat.
She set some of the ninja to throwing bombs, some to making shrapnel bombs from gunpowder and sharp rocks, and others trying the gunpowder barrel trick again.
"This one isn't gunpowder,” the sergeant signed to her.
"Leave it, then,” she ordered.
She poked the barrel with her foot and felt the liquid slosh. She remembered the near disaster on their first battle, when a dozen of the ninja had decided it would be a good idea to test out the wine rather than follow orders.
Fighting a losing battle stuck in her craw. She needed to do something, think of something that would let her keep her promise.
She kicked at one of the wine barrels. The dark wine shown at her, its alcohol fumes teasing her with a hint of an idea.
Alcohol. It was a hydrocarbon wasn't it? She remembered reading something about using alcohol in rocket engines during the early days of space exploration back on earth.
The buzz was finally letting up in her ears but she still couldn't hear anything. She signaled to a Ninja and had him get Micael.
"I need fifteen minutes,” she signed. “Keep the pressure up on the towers and try to at least knock some holes in the
ir doors. But don't do anything stupid. We can't afford to lose any more ninja."
"Right.” He looked doubtful.
"I've got a plan."
"Good."
Real life magic couldn't work miracles. She could use magic to kill a guard, but only one she could see and really integrate on. And by the time she'd cast her spell, he could probably have gotten six musket shots off at her.
But magic could do some things that she had no other way to do. Like levitating a grappling hook up three hundred feet. Or like separating alcohol from wine.
Without magic, alcohol can be separated from wine by distillation—the application of heat to the wine and boiling off the alcohol into a condensation tube. Huge amounts of energy are used to boil the wine—and then released when the alcohol is condensed back into a liquid.
As with cross-dimensional travel, magic could provide a catalyst, eliminating the excess energy wasted in distillation, because it did away with the need for the boiling and cooling wine.
Ellie found an empty barrel, yanked out her dimension stones, and went to work.
Ten minutes later, she had fifteen gallons of alcohol and maybe fifty gallons of sour grape juice that couldn't get anyone drunk but probably had some wonderful antioxidant qualities.
She divided the alcohol into five containers, then pulled another torch from the wall.
This was the tricky part. She remembered reading about fuel-air bombs the Air Force had used in Afghanistan and she thought she understood the principle, but that didn't mean she could make one work. And she was running out of time.
The glow on the horizon told her that the city would be waking up. Soon, the gunners in the towers would be able to spot targets, fire down on any of the guerilla army they caught in the open and create a kill zone outside the fortress where city guards could rally.
She used her magic to transfer the heat from the torch into three of the five alcohol containers. Enough heat to vaporize the alcohol, but not enough to make it combust.
She wrapped the barrels in a sheath created of magic, keeping the super-heated alcohol liquid and eliminating its tendency to explode the barrels.
When she looked up from her stones, the torch had guttered out, the bombs were warm to the touch, and she was sweating despite the autumn cool.